Dr. Dawn Lemanne talks a little about this in this lecture:
Here is a similar lecture by her. I’m no longer sure what the difference is between them, sorry.
Whatever the response of a few cancers to ketones, it certainly seems clear, as you say, that a ketogenic diet is a good method of preventing cancers from getting started, at least.
Any idea on which ones? Seyfried says cancer can also ferment l-glutamine, so you have to stop that too. There are drugs for that, but you need to know timing also, and of course you can’t get the drugs, because you’re not allowed to treat cancer with that protocol.
Dr. Lemanne mentions a couple types in at least one of the videos I just posted. I’ll have to go back and re-watch them, when I have the time, to garner that information.
Sugar, plain and simple. But “spike” is a term that’s very much overhyped in the Keto world, Insulin rises and falls, some call everything a spike, same goes for blood sugar. Most of the water retention you lose with low carbs is muscle glycogen, which really shouldn’t be considered water retention at all because it’s beneficial, subcutaneous water retention is a problem though. That’s the retention that can raise BP, make you look bloated etc.
I have no detectable effect from Coffee or tea, and even if I did I wouldn’t care. You don’t want to become another Insulin-o-phobic person. If your carbs are low, you’ll be fine. Obsessing about something you can’t even measure yourself while knowing that you’re not doing anything to provoke it is crazy. Insulin isn’t your enemy, people like to villainize it and call it the “fat storage hormone” and like to forget it’s also the same hormone that makes our cells suck in all the other nutrients as well. You’d be literally dead without it. Having it chronically high is the problem, eating low carb addresses that.
Hi lfod14, I am not sure I think of insulin as a fat storage hormone. As when I was eating a very high carb, extremely low fat (virtually non existent), diet I was slim, and no matter how much pizza I ate, how much bread I didn’t gain. While my SO has continued to gain on those same foods. So it’s different for everyone. But I must’ve had high insulin levels as I was a snack monster, snacking throughout the day, indulging in sugary foods, and battling chronic inflammation. I’d eat often because if I didn’t my energy levels dipped too low. Now on keto I don’t experience those awful dips in energy anymore. And I have neither cravings nor hunger pangs. I eat a lot of fat and reach satiety, in a way I never did before. I remember eating a whole shop bought pizza on the weekend, polishing the whole thing off and feeling hardly full at all. My SO would eat one too and he’d be stuffed, like a normal person. But after a while I’d feel kind of hollow, and I never put on an ounce from eating pizza and bread, or biscuits and cake. I suspect this was due to some gluten sensitivity. I actually took a coeliac test, but it came back normal. I’m pretty sure my high insulin levels (which I in my complete ignorance never allowed to fall) must’ve damaged my metabolic health. And although I don’t wish to vilify insulin, I do want to ensure I am doing everything I can now to hopefully over the next few years heal my metabolic system with keto. And so get off my cancer drug Tamoxifen.
Sounds like a solid, thoughtful gameplan. Eager to hear about your progress along the way - both to share your knowledge and to inspire others who might find themselves in comparable situations. 
This sounds like a version of the Kempner rice diet, which does work. The key is the non-existent fat, apparently.
But insulin is, indeed, a fat-storage hormone. One of its (many) jobs is to inhibit the action of hormone sensitive lipase in adipocytes. Triglycerides are too large to pass through the cell wall, so when fat is sent to the fat cells the triglycerides get broken down, then the fatty acids and the glycerol pass into the adipocyte and are reassembled into a triglyceride again for storage.
But elevated insulin prevents the triglycerides inside our fat cells from being broken down again by hormone-sensitive lipase, so they are trapped. This is why the key to a ketogenic diet is to lower insulin by cutting way back on the carbohydrate intake. Once insulin has dropped, the fats in adipocytes can leave again, and they become available to be metabolised.
This action of insulin is very helpful, if we are a bear trying to fatten up for the winter. It means that we can keep eating berries and storing the fat that the berry sugars get turned into (and insulin also keeps us feeling hungry, so we keep eating). Then, when winter comes, and there is no food, we have plenty of fat to live off of until spring.
Hi Paul, that’s interesting about the non existant fat. I did eat a lot of nuts back then as I loved nuts, but that was the only fat source and perhaps that type of fat didn’t have an impact. My SO eats a high carb, high fat diet, and that might be why he gains from the same carbs I didn’t gain from back then. My constant hunger back then was probably due to elevated insulin levels. I remember eating a lot of berries and fruit, nuts, dades and nut and fruit bars (containing nuts and dades) which I loved back then. The only remnant from my old foods is 13 almonds which I eat in the morning as a snack. I eat 13 because they are really quite small. If they were larger I’d eat fewer. But they are lovely and crunchy. The taste of them reminds me of my mom’s homemade marzipan when I was little. So it’s a bit of luxury. My second bit of luxury is coffee with cream. My third a nice fatty piece of pork belly or shoulder joint pork crackling.
Maybe one thing to consider is sleep apnoea. This is a common but often missed cause of nocturia (having to get up in the night to pee). My own poor sleep and frequent waking to pee turned out to be due to sleep apnoea. A combination of keto weight loss and then daily throat exercises fixed that very quickly. If I skip the exercises the problem comes back. From waking and having to get up sometimes as often as 7 times a night with a full bladder, I now get up once a night on average - not too bad for a man of my advanced years.
This may not of course be what is causing your sleep issues but I thought it worth mentioning.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I learnt that any food you take in creates an insulin spike. Some more than others obviously.
Depends on how you define “spike.” All food stimulates insulin secretion, to varying degrees. How much depends on what we eat and on the state of our metabolic health.
Insulin reacts most strongly to the level of glucose in our blood, and carbohydrates are nothing more than glucose molecules linked in various ways. The effect of protein on insulin depends on whether it is eaten in conjunction with carbs or not; on a low-carb diet, the effect is less. Fat has only a minimal effect on insulin.
We need insulin in order to assimilate our food, so insulin secretion is not to be feared. But too much insulin damages the body, and above a certain level also prevents the metabolism of fatty acids in preference to glucose. The point of a ketogenic diet is to allow insulin to drop low enough to allow us to burn fat.
Hi gaz3, thanks for your reply. I don’t have sleep apnoea, my SO, however, does. But the getting up to go to the bathroom several times in the night, well I’m running to the bathroom several times during the day as well. And this is good, as the type of water retention I suffered from before keto was the subcutaneous one, under the skin, due to the lipoedema. Lipoedema means fluid in the fat. And keto is really helping me combat this. But yes, can be a bit of a nuisance in the night. Though I generally tend to fall back asleep pretty fast.
But that’s very normal… Several during the day, ideally zero during the night, I so appreciate I have that as it seems not the norm…? Even my SO wakes up once. My body patiently waits until morning. I may go to bed with a pretty serious need to pee (sometimes I am lazy to go downstairs again, it may wake me up anyway), I still won’t wake up 
(What’s wrong with me. What the hell my bladder DO? It can’t be so big…)
But waking up MANY times… It can’t be JUST the water, it’s not THAT much!
Hi Shinita. It’s 3 times usually, sometimes 4, I wouldn’t say many. And many many times more during the day. But this frequent water shedding happened after I started keto. I’m not too concerned, it appears to be helping my lipoedema as my legs, before swelling, look 80% better in the morning. Also another brilliant keto benefit I am now enjoying - no bruises🙂
Yup! many people do, including LOSING tons of fat eating high carb. Like everything else, the context is what matters. If you’re very insulin sensitive, you can get away eating a lot of carbs with very little issues, couple that with a faster metabolism, and many people have no issues on higher carb diets.
I’m absoultely a snack monster, really just an eating monster, always have been. Even doing a hybrid of CKD/TKD and having more carbs than most keto’rs my A1C is holding in the 4.8-5.1 area usually which is very low, my LP-IR is low, so I’m very insulin sensitive now, doesn’t stop me from trying to eat 24/7, just how I am.
I also though I had a gluten issue at one point, was diagnosed lactose intolerant twice by different doc’s. Further testing show I process both of them just fine. Gluten and Dairy are go-to things to hate on these days, but again, context.
On the Tamoxifen, really depends on you and your risk levels, E2 levels, and whether you think you need it. I take it as well, I run higher Estrogen than most dudes, and have had mild gynecomastia in the past, luckily nothing that needed surgery to correct but I’m all set with that! Also doesn’t help that I keep my Testosterone a tad bit higher than normal, so I push it a little there. Some people think those drugs are terrible, but they’ve shown to be pretty safe as a whole, I’m sure you’re probably taking more than men do when we take it, but still. It’s just binding to Estrogen receptors so the estrogen can’t, and Tamoxifen is selective which is good vs others.
Hi lfod14, I take 20mg Tamox. I was told by my oncologist I am low risk, but she still wanted me to take Tamox for 10 years. I have now completed 2 years, and am hoping, because of keto, to do just 3 more years, so that would be 5 years in total. The Tamox does make me feel pretty tired, but the side effects really aren’t that bad, so long as I stay on Wockhardt.
I must confess the only reason I began keto was because I read it was beneficial in treating lipoedema and lymphedema (after being diagnosed with lipoedema I was also diagnosed with secondary lymphedema - bilateral leg swelling). But now, having read how keto can also be beneficial in both treatment and prevention of cancer, I have twice the incentive to continue ketoing on and it’s a good thing, no a real blessing, that I love the food.